Ashes
by featheredxrequiem
Summary: Of all the things to take away from this situation, THAT was what she had picked up from the ashes... One Shot. Hugue de Watteau (a.k.a. Sword Dancer) x OC. Requested by Yuki-Kai-Tora, a good friend of mine. Thanks for making me write.


_Requested, as the summary states, by my old friend Yuki-Kai-Tora. I own neither Hugue, Evangeline (property of Yuki), nor any other _Trinity Blood_ characters or concepts featured in this one shot. I own merely the plot, diction, and syntax employed to bring you this hopefully enjoyable little tryst. I apologize for any OOC actions or portrayals of characters or incongruous concepts; it has been years since I've seen the anime, and I have never read either the manga or the light novels. On that note, I did not realize until I rewatched episode six how closely my opening scene resembled theirs, so forgive me on that note if you will. More could be said about the mistakes and oversights I have made in writing this story, but I hope that the remainder are small and do not interfere with any enjoyment of the story. Proceed at your leisure~_

* * *

"They grow bolder by the hour."

Firelight cast dancing shadows on the walls of the enclosed office, flickering lowly from behind the grate. They danced between the threads of the rich rug lying on the floor, feigning dalliance with the ornate patterns of weave work and wallpaper before withdrawing with crackling laughter. Sparks sizzled in contact with the hushed atmosphere, challenging the dim lighting with military pomp and flare. Against the wall stood sentinel overlarge shadows, their distorted dimensions belonging one to a regal woman seated behind a heavy oak desk and the other to her imperial brother glaring into the fireplace.

"Indeed," he muttered, his lips twisting into a more disapproving frown than the one that so often graced his visage. "Given cloud cover," he continued, "they will even attack by daylight."

"Oh?"

Whirling on the younger woman, the man at the hearth clenched his fist and squared his shoulders. Infuriating female! She had hardly looked up from the paperwork scattered across her desk, one pristine glove still gliding smoothly through the loop of her signature. He slammed his fist against the mantle, setting the décor to quaking in fear at his boorish outburst.

"Well?" he demanded. "How do you plan to deal with this, sister? Send in your petty priests?"

"Would you invade the already war-torn Amsterdam with your savage soldiers, brother?" the woman responded, lifting her head and brushing a single blonde curl out of her face.

"Hmph."

With a gentle exhalation, she set aside her paperwork and regarded the brunet before her calmly over the steeple of her fingers. The press of night against the fire's glow threw the angular features of his face into sharp focus. For anyone else, she supposed, he might have looked even more frightening than normal. However, though he was older than her by some number of years, each passing day left her increasingly with the feeling that she was dealing with a petulant child; his truculent manners were tiresome at the best of times.

"We will send in Sword Dancer," she said simply after a moment's more staring, and returned her attention to her paperwork.

"That renegade?! He cannot be relied upon except to follow his own ambitions and the ghosts of his past," spat the brother, the veins on his corded neck straining against the stiff collar of his shirt.

"Amsterdam is a…specialty of his," was her final word. "Ghosts of the past are not the only things that move him."

【†】

Slow day, as usual. Blowing a damp strand of ebony hair that had escaped both hair tie and band in the course of her chores, Evangeline Hasek folded her hands over the handle of her broom and rested her chin atop them. She gazed about quietly at the dining room lobby of her little bed and breakfast, lips pressed into a faint frown. These days, _The Lonesome Bellow _was really earning its name, she thought as she watched the dust motes floating through the shafts of dim light settle on her freshly swept floor. Business was hard to come by on the outskirts of a broken-down city like Amsterdam, and the vampyre attacks as of late had scared away what few customers she had managed to garner in the past few years. Even her one semi regular had been absent for quite some time now.

_He's probably just busy with work, _she huffed. _Not like I care._

Despite that little addendum, she shot to hopeful attention as the door opened, a scathing remark for her favorite customer ready on the tip of her tongue. Rather than a black Vatican cloak and eyes the color of the late summer grass out her doors, however, she found two pairs of civilian clothes and ill-concealed garnet irises appraising her from the doorway. Her frown deepened, drawing lines of concern and irritation in the olive-toned skin of her forehead. Standing to her full height—admittedly not that impressive—she gripped her broom and faced her "visitors."

"Can I help you?"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten us already, Eva," murmured one, casually swiping his fingertips across a table while his partner watched the dust.

"I haven't," she said guardedly, eyes cutting left as the man in back advanced forward with a calm smirk. "And it's Evangeline."

"No need to be so hostile, Eva," the other persisted with the nickname. "We're just here to see how you are doing. This place seems pretty empty, huh?"

"I can't help but wonder if you and your boss have had anything to do with that," she muttered, only barely trying to keep the bitter, accusatory tone out of her voice.

"Tut, I'm sure he wouldn't be too happy to hear you bad mouth him like this," remarked the first with feigned injury as he moved to his partner's side. "Say, though. He's been wanting to talk to you for a while now. What do you say to—"

Before Evangeline could even open her mouth to say "no" to whatever demand had been about to fall on her ears, drawing her arm back from his partner's reach, the door opened again. The breeze blowing in was damp with the threat of rain, stirring the dust in the air and bearing the scent of dried flowers. Narrowing his eyes over his shoulder, the man leaning across Evangeline's broom handle made a derisive noise at the back of his throat and took a step back. At his signal, his partner did the same; they exchanged a mildly irritated glance, then, and withdrew, low hisses escaping their tightly pressed lips as they shouldered past the hooded figure in the doorway on their way out. Beneath his silver-lined cowl, the man watched them go, emerald green eyes following them until a pale hand shut the door in their wake.

"Mind telling me what a pair of Methuselah was doing here, Evangeline?" he murmured as he shifted his gaze to her, long waves of pale blond hair tumbling down his shoulders as he shed his cloak.

"They're like rats," she answered with a shrug. "They've been crawling all over this city."

"Hm. So I've heard. You should be more careful."

"Like I _invited _them in," she muttered, slapping her hand against her hip and frowning at the blond as he folded his towering frame into one of the chairs at a table near the door.

Huffing out a sigh when he said nothing more, she tossed her head, releasing a few more stray hairs from their bindings, and sauntered behind the bar to the kitchen. When she emerged, she had left her broom somewhere behind and now carried two glasses of water. Her guest was leaning back on his chair legs to peer out the window, but as her shadow fell over the table, he righted himself and accepted the water with a grateful nod. She perched on the edge of the table, one leg propped up on a chair for balance as she leaned back and regarded the man sitting opposite her. He hadn't changed much since she'd seen him last: same glass-green eyes, same pallid skin and hair—such a contrast to her darkness, she thought, twisting a strand of obsidian hair between fingers of earthy tones stained with calluses.

"You're staring."

The low, bemused rumble of his voice shook her from her reverie and into the realization that, after dropping her hand, she _had _been staring. It was hard not to, now that he had left his cloak draped over the back of his chair. Heavy metal buckles guarding his throat and clasping the two halves of his shirt together, he wore the somber black of a priest's habit tight across his broad chest. She could barely see the hint of a golden chain sliding down the high, stiff collar of the shirt, and a little higher up, the faintest slant of a smile on his lips. A flare of heat went to her cheeks and she slammed her glass down onto the table with a defiant frown.

"Why would I be staring at _you, _Pretty Boy?" she snapped, crossing her arms and glaring down the bridge of her nose at him. "Besides, you're a priest—" _celibate asshole _"—so what good would ogling you do anyway?" As if he couldn't bore her more, she flicked her hair over her shoulder and fixed her gaze on the far corner of the room. "What brings you here anyway, Father de Watteau?" she asked after a time, though she already knew the answer. "Business or pleasure?"

"Business."

"What?" Astonished, she snapped her gaze back to him, noting the almost guilty dip of his head as he took a drink from his glass.

"I said…business," he repeated in a lower voice, frowning at his water. "I'm afraid I am here on Vatican time rather than my own, Evangeline."

Slowly, she slid from the table's lip and settled into her chair, gawking at the man. How many times had he visited her, sometimes fresh off a mission and battered all to hell, and always the soft, gentle answer had been "pleasure". Never had his presence graced _The Lonesome Bellow _on a matter of whatever his business for the church entailed. That it did so now left a heavy feeling in her stomach, and from the look on his face, he was just as displeased by the idea as she.

For a while, they sat steeped in fermenting silence, oppressed by the heaviness of that word: business. One could not find words to speak; the other could not find the desire to do so. As the sun leaking through the hazy clouds descended to dusk at last, Evangeline stood quietly and lit a lamp from the bar.

"You must have traveled a long way from Rome," was all she said when she spoke. "Food?"

He lifted his head, and in the shadows passing over his face, she thought she saw an upward turn at the corner of his mouth.

"Please."

【†】

It was night when Hugue woke, the mattress of his borrowed bed familiarly soft beneath him. Staff already in hand, he sat up slowly, scanning the shadows cast by the corners for the noise that had woken him. Swinging his legs over the low bed, he stood with practiced silence and padded in his bare feet to the door. The golden cross he wore about his neck hung heavy and cold on his breast; apart from it and his black pants, he was naked in the night as he crept out into the hallway. Icy splinters of moonlight were his only light, stealing down the wooden stairs without a sound and drawing ever nearer to the hushed murmurs that had stolen him from his slumber.

"—before, I want nothing to do with you," he heard Evangeline's voice hiss, followed by an unfamiliar male tenor.

"Now now, Evangeline, angel—" as Hugue advanced forward into a patch of shadow against the stairwell, he could just barely make out the figure of a man about his height leaning over Evangeline, a flash of fang peeking out as moonlight cut across his smirk "—is that any way to talk to the man keeping your fine establishment safe?"

"If you keep coming around, there won't _be _an establishment, Mathias! You and your thugs have been nothing but trouble for me and this city; I hardly have any customers now because of you."

"Good—more time for me, hm? Leave this hovel—"

"Hovel?" she spat, "I worked my whole life for this place!"

"—to the dogs and come be where you should be: by my side." Hugue felt the hard metal of his staff press into his palm as he tightened his grip, willing himself to stay put. "I can't guarantee the…significance of all your life's hard work, you know, if you won't do me that little respect."

"So help me, Mathias…!"

The man in the doorway barked out a laugh, resting his elbow on the frame and inclining his head over Evangeline's. In the low lighting, the hidden priest could hardly make out the angular features of his face and a shaggy mop of coal-black hair.

"One more week, and I'll have my answer. Now, how about a kiss goodbye?" She slammed the door in his face; Hugue had never been more grateful for Evangeline's ball-busting tendencies. From behind the wooden barrier came an unrestrained, bestial snarl, cut off with a low, off-kilter laugh. "So be it. I'm a gracious man, though—you'll see. I'll give you twenty-four hours to restore me to my better graces with a more…pleasant answer."

Without waiting for the retreat of the footsteps, Hugue began anew his descent, watching with concern as Evangeline sank down into the nearest chair. Hands buried in her hair, she sat with her head bowed over the tabletop, a heavy sense of weariness weighing upon her shoulders. She heard him approach, though, as he purposefully stepped on a squeaky floorboard for her benefit, and lifted her head. For a moment, she seemed caught off guard by his appearance, blinking tiredly until recognition startled her into a flurry of emotion. Fear, in her widening eyes; abashment, in the rouge dabbed upon her cheeks; desire, in the way her gaze lingered on his scars; anger, as they cut to his face; fury, in her clenched jaw.

"Just rats, hm?" he snorted, indicating the door with a nod.

"How much did you hear?" she demanded.

"Enough."

"How much is enough?" she repeated in irritation.

"Enough to know you're in danger," he shot back at her snap, narrowing his eyes.

"I am not. I can take care of myself, Pretty Boy. Go back to bed." Dismissing him with a sigh, she stood and slammed her chair back under the table. "That's where I'm going. I'm tired."

"Evangeline."As she passed him by, he caught her arm, only to have her pull it away.

"Leave me alone, Hugue. You stick to your…business, and I'll stick to mine."

No further discussion to be had on the subject, she stalked past him and up the stairs. He watched her go quietly, knowing it was futile to try to make her stay and talk that night. Even so, it was difficult to hold his peace, fighting to keep back the only phrase that kept him from chasing the ashes of a past long burned away.

_You _are _my business, Evangeline_.

【†】

There was little rest to be had that night. Not a moment in her bed had Evangeline spent before Mathias had arrived, hoping to intercept the vampyre before he entered and woke Hugue as well. So well had that worked; Hugue and his business had interfered after all. His witnessing of even a part of what had become an unfortunate routine in her life upset Evangeline. The dark, ominous clouds gathering in his eyes seemed to her accusatory, and she could not bear the pressure in his gaze. She was at once furious, guilty, ashamed, and ultimately unable to sleep. Even once the inn was secure and she was safely secluded in her room, she spent the better part of the night marking time with moonbeams.

Morning light found her, several more hours deficit for sleep, in the garden. Knees pressed into the dirt and palms caked in soil, she was surrounded by piles of weeds uprooted room the rows of flowers and seemed to have been at work for some time. She had not yet changed her clothes from the day before, and, wiping her arm across her brow, was by now feeling weighed down by the layers of grime that fit to her like a second skin. Though a thick cloud cover roiled over the unlucky city, shards of sunlight fell like shattered glass among the bladed grass, and the air was hot and oppressive. When his shadow fell over her, she continued to work in the hopes that if she ignored him long enough, she could think of him as nothing more than just a passing cloud here to deliver some long-needed rain rather than a hellish storm.

"Evangeline…"

_Of course not._

"What, Hugue."

"Have you been out here all day?"

_And night._

When she didn't answer him, silence again spent in the vain hopes that he might just disappear or go away, she heard the barest rustling of cloth and knew that he had knelt down behind her.

"I should have known you would have been," he murmured, fingering a nearby flower just at the corner of her vision. "Fresh air and hard work—wasn't that what you always said calmed you down after a bad day?"

"What do you want, Hugue?" she mumbled at last, head bent low over her work, though her hands had stilled and her muscles were tense.

"To know that you're okay."

An apology rode in on the sigh as he reached around her to pull her nails from the dirt she hadn't known she'd been digging into. Heat flushed across her cheeks, and she turned away her face, standing shakily to her feet. He rested his hands loosely at her elbows, sliding his hands from her wrists down her forearms as a careful cage provided for her balance, but she moved away. Hugue and his chivalry! Didn't he know how that made her feel? She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

"I'm fine," she said in a small voice to break the static crackling in the air between them. "Just…tired."

"Why don't you go inside and lie down," he suggested gently, having listened to her restless movements in the darkness, and rested a hand softly on her drooping shoulder. "Close the inn and take a little rest, hm? You deserve it. I'll be out most of the day, anyway."

_I would feel better if_ you _were locked up safely, _he seemed to say, _while I am away._

"Perhaps," the stubborn spitfire he had come to care for sighed, shutting her eyes and combing a hand through her tousled hair before remembering just how dirty her hands were and pulling it away with a grimace. "A nice shower and a nap sounds divine. When should I expect you so I can prepare dinner?"

"Don't bother," he answered with a shake of his head. "If I return in time for dinner, I will prepare it. As an apology?"

She had to fight a smile as he offered a ghost of a grin, but he had made an offer she could not refuse. To have a guest cook for her? Unorthodox, to be sure, but Hugue was not quite…conventional, and her relationship with him was certainly—well, perhaps—something more than simply proprietor and customer. The priest was a wonder in the kitchen, besides.

"Don't be late, Father."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Ms. Hasek."

【†】

Just as _The Lonesome Bellow _would have passed out of sight_, _the traveling priest paused to turn back on his way, watching with careful satisfaction as the light in the uppermost window darkened. For once, Evangeline had heeded his word, and the knowledge lifted some of the weight from his shoulders; he could breathe more easily now, even in the dust-choked air. He had been coming to her little inn for several years now, finding sanctuary in its nearness to home and the teasing smile of the young, audacious woman who ran it. Though her words were sharp as a vampyre's fangs, he had known for quite some time that she cared for him, and he could not say he did not feel the same. At the thought of the ever abhorrent leech, however, his brows drew together and he turned away to continue his search. There would be time enough when his business was finished. Then, things might have a chance at normal.

The work with which he was charged took him, actually, very little time. As Evangeline had so offhandedly put it, vampyres _were _crawling all over the city like rats, though with the acrid taste of fermented hate at the back of his throat, he thought that had always been true. By midday, a lone male had presented himself, however inadvertent it was. His lissome grace and sculpted features were out of place in the tattered ensemble of a vagrant, and a telltale fang glinted under the curve of a self-assured smile following the passing glance of the young woman he had since followed into the city's underbelly. Hugue had so well acquainted himself with the mannerisms of his prey that he had noted the male's presence long before the creature had moved, but Caterina's orders specified nonviolence unless absolutely necessary. Chasing rats down sewers and velvet-carpeted halls in Amsterdam to gather what charred pieces of a past that may not have burned to cinders in the fire was nothing new to him, so he supposed that he did not mind following directives this time. If he did not, besides, he was sure that the Vixen of Milan—he frowned as he strode down the back alley his mark had led him to, and chastised himself on the use of such an unfortunate nickname—would make up for it with an increase in the frequency of jobs that would take him a great distance from Amsterdam.

Never separated from the man by any more ground than was required to maintain unity with the shadows at his heels, there were very few times in which he lost sight of the two. For the most part, neither seemed concerned with the possibility of being followed, a trait he chalked up to arrogance on the vampyre's part but that was, on the part of the female, slightly concerning. The woman, dressed in a mock up of aristocratic fashion, he persuaded himself, was likely of that streetwalking variety; there was else no reason for her unescorted excursion into the dank substratum of winding streets and increasingly narrower alleys. Even so, he grew uneasy at the elongated game of cat and mouse in which he participated, ever suspicious of the seeming unwillingness of either target to be lost out of sight. Had he been a man more easily tired, he might have noticed the purposeful delays sooner, but the steady pace hid much. It was just as he resolved to go no further that he was confronted with the fact that he had already gone too far.

It began with a blow to his ribcage, sending him into collision with the brick wall to his left. His neck snapped back as his skull cracked against the wall and white-hot stars flashed against the back of his eyelids as he tasted blood. Pain flared in his shoulder and he felt his knees trying to buckle at the unexpected pain, but stubbornly he kept on his feet, gripping his staff tightly and moving to unlock the hidden blades within. He had not thought that there was enough room to fear an attack from the side, but as it was apparent that he had been incorrect, there would be more than enough room to fight on his terms. Still disoriented from the initial impact, however, he was unable to move quickly enough to avoid the three pairs of hands that gripped onto his shoulders and forced him to his knees.

"Nnh!"

"Well well," echoed a vaguely familiar voice. "I _thought _I smelled a Vatican dog. If it isn't the priest from the inn."

One of the hands, previously pressing down on the back of his throat, sank a set of manicured talons into his hair and gave a vicious pull, jerking his head up from its bowed state. They belonged, it seemed, to the woman he had mistaken for a prostitute before, her pretty face distorted by the bladed sneer on her lush red lips as she forced him to look forward. Before him was one of the vampyres he had first seen accosting Evangeline, the same male he had followed into this alley in the first place; he had not noticed him from a distance.

"I wasn't expecting you to be so easy to detain," the male mused, accepting Hugue's staff from one of the vampyres holding down the priest's arms as they relieved him of his weapon. "It was rather considerate of you to follow me so willingly."

"Do not mistake the fight for being over yet," Hugue managed, his expression cool despite the ache that resulted as one of his captors stomped viciously on his injured shoulder.

"It is four to one, Father, and we have your weapon. Game, set, and match. We did not come for a fight, regardless," said the man with a shrug and a lazy smile. "Only to delay you."

"Delay?"

"Don't worry," the woman laughed, high and shrill as she dragged a nail down the vulnerable flesh of his throat. "We'll kill you nice and slow," she promised, a lock of her too-perfumed hair trailing down his cheek as she leaned over him.

"If you can."

Dropping his head suddenly, he leaned all of his weight on one foot, sweeping out with the other to fell the vampyre to his right and release his good shoulder. In the next moment, he rammed his injured shoulder into the vampyre flanking left, driving them into the wall as he reached with his good arm to fling the female into the male at his front. The entire affair took less than a minute as he used the energy stored in his coiled leg to launch forward and extract his staff from what had been the leader, the exchange serving as a springboard as he righted himself at the vampyre's head, both blades drawn. With the satisfaction of knowing from their startled hisses that his ability to move with speed and strength of one of their own, he pressed the tip of the shorter blade to the throat of the male at his feet, the longer blade held out as a ward against the remaining three.

"What were you sent to delay me from?" Hugue questioned sharply.

"Doesn't matter," the lead male laughed. "You're too late. The boss has probably already taken care of that bitch at the inn."

"Yeah—burn Mathias and you get burned in turn," sneered the female.

_Burn_...? Hugue mused with a frown, following four pairs of carmine eyes to the sky overhead.

Clouds had been gathering for the better part of the day, but even so, the dark streak now billowing across the sky seemed unnatural and foreboding. A stiff wind slapped against his cloak as he cut his gaze to the snickering creatures getting to their feet, bringing with it no longer scents of rain but rather a hot, dry scent uncharacteristic of Amsterdam, even in the summer months. As a handful of soft, white flakes reminiscent of snow drifted down to alight against the dull cloth of his collar, he touched them with hesitancy and watched in inexplicable horror as they crumbled to dust at the slightest feel. Realization dawned on him abruptly, plummeting into his stomach with a heavy weight that scalded like molten lead. He did not dare to waste another moment, swinging the longer blade of his weapon in a wide-sweeping arc and sheathing it with a snap without bothering to clean the dripping blade.

_Evangeline!_

No time to bother with the labyrinthine slums into which he had been led, Hugue turned instead to the rooftops of the city, thankful that the majority of architecture in Amsterdam was of the same height and structure, even here. Digging his toes into a crevice between loosened bricks, he scaled the wall with minimum difficulty and hit the rooftop running. From this vantage, he could more clearly see the smokestack that had become, he presumed, _The Lonesome Bellow. _It was lit from within with a dim glow like an ember in the ashes, pulsing sluggishly with what little life it retained; he could not, for the smoke, see how much precisely was still standing, but it had retained the vaguest shape of a building. He only hoped that he would have enough time to return before the flames consumed the one fire left burning for him on the top floor. She was probably still sleeping—he was determined that she would still wake.

He could feel the heat of the blaze when he was only a handful of rooftops away, the air a whorl of dust as the high-pressure system of heat strained against the weight of the low-pressure storm hanging oppressively overhead. Sparks and flaming debris whipped off the paneling of the antique wooden building, but it was not in as poor a shape as he had feared from amount of smoke he had seen. There was, at best, some five minutes he might have before it collapsed; he only hoped that Evangeline had not inhaled too much smoke—or, better, that she was awake and able to escape the inferno while he secured the area. Only a single vampyre stood on the street, casually discarding the lighter he had presumably used to begin the fire and settling back to smoke a cigarette pinched between his almost elegant fingers. Hugue recognized the style and dull charcoal color of the male's hair and the arrogant nonchalance as he spoke.

"You shouldn't have scorned me, Eva," Mathias cooed to the crackling flames. "I waited far too long for some half-rate Terran whore to choose a Vatican priest over me."

"I would like to think that there is a reason she did so," Hugue muttered, the heel of his boot connecting solidly with the distracted Methuselah's windpipe as first his cloak and then he descended from the lip of the nearest roof.

Seizing the heavy fabric from the fresh corpse, he held it in front of his face as a makeshift shield, only wishing for a bucket of water to dampen it first, and promptly charged into the inn. Inside, the heat was blistering, and he found himself struggling to breathe on that account alone. Smoke billowed up against the roof and hung over everything like a haze, seeping in to every crack and crevice, between floorboards, into his nasal passages, snaking around his feet, slithering down his throat where he swallowed it with the acrid taste of ash. A support beam crashed down within inches of his face when he was hardly even a foot in the door, and he spat out an oath as hot as the ash he breathed in. Fire had already consumed the staircase, but it was standing yet, and, ducking the smoldering scaffold, he made for it without hesitation. He could feel floorboards give way under his feet long before the first splinter, and spent little time on any one piece of flooring.

The second story was, miraculously, not half the death trap of the first floor, but the air was black and thick with carbon, and he could feel the heat raking its claws against his back. Rivulets of sweat trickled down his face, his hair dark and hanging damply in his face as he pressed on, coughing into his sleeve. Evangeline's door was shut when he found it, and he gave life to the briefest hope that she was sufficiently away from it as he drove his foot solidly through the weak wood. It came away in pieces, but did not collapse at the first blow, and he let out a noise of frustration.

"Evangeline!" he yelled, straining his already raw voice to be heard over the roar of the flames.

Another kick and the barrier came free of its hinges with a groan that shook the entire establishment. Coughing a curse once more, Hugue waved away the smoke with an impatient arm, bowing below the vitiation in the room to look for the girl with hair the color of a raven's feathers. She was slumped against the far wall below the half-opened window, as if she had still been asleep when the fire began and had only managed enough strength to haul herself up and open a single windowpane before the carbon-monoxide she had inhaled had taken its toll on her body. With his cloak, Hugue smothered the flames licking at her bronze skin and gathered her close against his chest. The blades of his staff cut away a sufficient portion of the wall that he could see his way to the street below; without hesitation, he leapt.

Unbalanced from his load and blinded for the smoke, his landing was less than optimal, but he tucked and rolled with it to protect Evangeline, gritting his teeth as he landed badly on his injured shoulder. As quickly as could be managed, he settled her to the ground and unraveled his cloak, giving her shoulder a brisk tap and calling her name in the case that she may respond. Offering a prayer for forgiveness—this would cause him hell he was sure—he tore apart the sooty fabric of her shirt and pressed his head to her left chest, one hand across her abdomen to check for a breath and the other cradling her head. Sure that, by now, she would have come to life and throttled him for "assaulting her innocence"—oh how he hoped that she would—he placed the heel of his hand at the center of her breast bone, holding back his fingers with the other so that he would not cause her undue harm, and began a series of chest compressions.

_Come on, Evangeline. Stubborn woman, don't give out on me yet. _

Just past the thirtieth compression, as he leaned down to give her a breath, she jerked into an upright position. One mouth open to give breath, the other open to take it, they collided, lips cracked and dry from the heat. Stunned for the briefest of moments, Hugue exhaled gently into the impromptu kiss and pulled away, brushing a hand against Evangeline's cheek. She was still warm to the touch and flushed as his fingers grazed her skin, deep blue eyes blinking bewilderedly. Before either could say a word, however, _The Lonesome Bellow _gave a pained groan, shuddered, and fell to its knees, heaving a sigh of embers and ash into the sky as it collapsed inwards on itself at last. A cloud of dust and heat rolled over the couple, and Hugue maneuvered himself to shield Evangeline from any debris that may have followed the great wind the collapse had produced.

In the silence that followed began a gentle patter, first a single drop and then slowly a curtain of water as the storm broke at last. What remained of the fire dwindled into smoldering ashes as the sky opened over Amsterdam, skeletons of what had been one woman's life to that point sticking out of the wreckage like grave markers. Sweat mixed with soot mixed with ash mixed with rain as the priest ran a charred glove through his tousled hair, turning to look into the sapphire eyes still trained on his lips.

"Evangeline?" he murmured gently, leaning forward to pull his cloak up over her bare shoulders so that she would not catch cold and so, his subconscious chided, he would not be distracted by the glittering crystals of storm water trickling down the dark slopes of her bared skin. "Are you alright?"

She did not answer him at first, and he feared that he would need to resuscitate her once more until she let out a shaky breath that hitched in a broken laugh. Worried, he frowned and rested his hand lightly on her shoulder, only to have her turn to him and throw herself against his chest. Rain from her hair dripped into his as she dropped a bold kiss onto his lips, and he found himself laughing as well. Of all the things to take away from this situation, _that _was what she had picked up from the ashes…

【†】

A cup of tea, cradled in hands as smooth and flawless as the delicate porcelain but not half so fragile, fire burning low behind an intricate metal grate. Peering aimlessly through the sifting steam above the dark amber liquid, Cardinal Caterina Sforza looked out over the city of Rome beyond the Vatican's walls. Little lights reflected against the darkened windowpane like so many stars, interspersed with the occasional glimmer of life from the fire in the grate. She let out a long breath as she watched them, lifting the cup to her lips to sip at the honeyed drink and thinking with the faintest of smiles that her old caretaker was wearing off on her. As the charred logs in the fireplace smoldered down to embers, she turned from the window and, settling her cup and saucer on her desk, moved to stir them back to some semblance of life.

Beneath the saucer for her tea there lay on her desk a single piece of paper: gone the piles of work some several months past, gone the incessant signing, gone the protests and pleas. All was quiet, even in the fine, sloped handwriting of the page. Dated in bygone weeks, it detailed the events surrounding the extermination of a particularly troubling Methuselah street gang in Amsterdam, including a fire that had, if not for the sudden storm, all but sent the entire city up in flames. Repairs were being made, it said, though the only building to be completely consumed was to remain in ashes and merely converted into a community garden. No one had died save for a handful of the culprits responsible.

The letter was the first and only correspondence she had received from a certain blond AX member following his latest mission. She had read it perhaps ten times since she had received it, but it gave—to the eyes of most—very little away save for the most austere details of the excursion. Without glancing at it a last time, the Duchess of Milan carefully extracted it from under the fragile porcelain and, folding it neatly, deposited it into the fire. Glowing scarlet bled into tarnished gold curling into umber edges as the cinders ate away at the carefully inscribed rarity, but she hardly paused to watch, merely taking up her tea and her position at the window again.

"Just in time," she murmured, half concealing a yawn as she watched the letter crumble into ashes in the mirror of the window. "The ashes were beginning to cool; the fire could use more fuel."

* * *

_At last, at last, it's finished! I apologize, Yuki, for how long this took me; I promised it within a shorter time period than I could produce it, given my flighty muse and my workload this semester. Forgive me, anyway? I hope you have all enjoyed! Reviews and PMs are very much welcomed; flames will likely be ignored or fed to Discord (which rhymed!). _


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